Science Porn

[SteelCurtain]

[SteelCurtain]

Slow motion slinky drop.
Stars are really freakin big.

[Lemonvariable72]

Captured one night last May this eight frame mosaic starts on the left, down Northside Drive through Yosemite National Park. It ends thousands of light-years away though, as the arc of the Milky Way tracks toward the center of our galaxy on the right, far beyond the park's rugged skyline. That night was still moonless when the storm clouds retreated, so the rocky faces of the surrounding mountains are lit by campfires and artifical lights. Yosemite Falls is at the left. The granite face of Half Dome juts above the far horizon, near the center of the view. The remarkable flash above it is a bright meteor. Part of the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower the colorful streak is moving up, its trail pointing directly back to the shower's radiant, low in Aquarius. This year's Eta Aquarids should peak in the moonless early morning hours of May 6 as the Earth sweeps through dust from the tail of Comet Halley.

Beautiful photo, mustve been a bitch to get it right.

[Coffee Jesus]

Slow motion slinky drop.

Interesting... The tension of the lower slinky being held by the upper slinky keeps it from falling. If this video si genuine, it must must mean the slinky is dropped and the tension released at the same rate... ?? I don't know much physics.

[SteelCurtain]

If the GIF is in fact real, (and it wouldn't be that hard for it to be real) it is likely that it isn't just an off the shelf slinky. It is probably calibrated so that the spring constant provides an upward force exactly equal and opposite of gravity.

[Little lunch]

You explained that so well. I was trying to explain it to a friend with hand gestures but then my hand sought of just stayed still as I showed the upward force plus gravity.
I also thought it couldn't be a run of the mill slinky but then stopped thinking about it when I realised the logistics of building such a slinky was way too much for my little brain. :-)

[pocaracas]

The center of gravity is falling! And that, boys and girls, is what counts!

http://video.mit.edu/watch/double-cone-and-plane-24778/

[SteelCurtain]

Absolutely true. But the spring is what keeps the bottom side of the slinky from falling with the center of mass. The spring is in actuality closing from both sides, but since the spring is falling at the same rate as it is closing upwards, it appears to stand still. Essentially, these two concepts together make for a really cool physics demonstration.

[Little lunch]

I'm suspecting it would have been less slack then a normal slinky.
I'm not sure if the centre of gravity played as big a role as the fine tuning of the slinky.
But hey, I only found out about it 2 minutes ago so I could be wrong. :-)

[SteelCurtain]

The copper wire has a significant amount of AC electricity running through it, causing it to act like a really strong electromagnet. In the metal slug, eddy currents form due to the magnetic field the copper wire is causing while the copper wire has high frequency AC flowing through it. The metal slug’s electric resistance causes a portion of the electric energy to turn into heat, but the heat builds up until the metal slug becomes white hot and melts.
Read more at http://www.pbh2.com/science-nature/aweso...M6MtRMm.99

Putting out candles with CO2